Jerome Wetzel is the Chief Television Critic for Seat42F and a regular contributing reviewer on Blogcritics. He also appears on The Good, The Bad, and the Geeky podcast and Let's Talk TV With Barbara Barnett.

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Thursday, October 17, 2013

THE WALKING DEAD "Without An Accident"

It’s been months for both fans and the
characters of AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD since the last new installment. So
in this week’s season four premiere, “30 Days Without an Accident,” it’s
not surprising that things have changed. The group is now under the
leadership of The Council, rather than a single man. New recruits have
been welcomed. There’s a school and children present, as well as crops
and livestock. It seems things are finally getting good for the
survivors.

Of course, by the end of the hour, that
has started to change, but we’ll get to that. First, what this episode
revealed about our heroes.

Daryl (Norman Reedus) is happy!
He is part of the leadership for the prison, his romance with Carol
(Melissa McBride) has clearly progressed, and young’uns like Patrick
(Vincent Martella, Phineas and Ferb, Everybody Hates Chris) worship him.
Daryl still goes out on raids, but that allows him to feel important
and needed. Even bringing home a deer wins him admiration and
appreciation, so he has been fully accepted by those he cares for.

This is a shift from wounded loner who
follows orders. This is a step up for the guy who really deserves a
break. If anyone wasn’t getting what they should be getting in this new
world order, it was Daryl, so it should please fans to no end that his
station has improved.

And he’s not the only one. Carol is
running a school. Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman) has a girl, too, Karen
(Melissa Ponzio, Teen Wolf), and gets to decide if he wants to kill
walkers at the fence or go on supply runs, neither of which he enjoys,
but the choice is his. Carl (Chandler Riggs) is acting like a kid and
obedient son again, and gets to bond with Michonne (Danai Gurira) over
trivial things such as comic books. Rick (Andrew Lincoln) has settled
into farming under Hershel’s (Scott Wilson) tutelage. All is right in
the world.

One would think that these characters
wouldn’t relax. They’ve been comfortable before, on a farm no less, so
why should this time be any different? I think they’re likely feeling
secure because this is an improvement over other places, with a larger
contingent and stronger barriers. But they shouldn’t take it so easy
that they lose their edge.

Glenn (Steven Yeun) realizes this. He
hopes Maggie (Lauren Cohan) isn’t pregnant because he doesn’t want to
bring a child into this disaster. This, despite the fact that there are
relatively normal children in the group already. Still, Glenn has been
burned before, and he’s not about to just sit back and relax.

Carol, too, has a sneaking suspicion.
Although not as overt about her concerns as Glenn, she secretly
instructs the children of the compound on knife fighting after story
time. It’s not a bad idea, of course; anyone living in the walker world,
even kids, should know how to defend themselves. But it’s telling of
everyone else’s complacency that Carol doesn’t make her skill session
publicly known.

Glenn and Carol have a right to be
concerned. There are walkers pressing against their fence, more every
day, and starting to gather in select places, making the barriers less
than sure. Is this a sign of growing hoards coming together, something
the comic book version faced, or is something else afoot, with the
walkers being lured there, as Nathan Fillion suggested during the
aftershow, Talking Dead?

And there’s trouble within. A pig, whom
Carl names Violet, is sick, and then so is Patrick. Is there a new virus
threatening our heroes? Why now, and where did it come from? Isn’t it
enough that they have to fight walkers and psychos like The Governor
(David Morrissey), who still hasn’t been seen again yet, but will be
soon enough? Do new and sudden illness have to present a problem, too,
and how will they defend against them?

THE WALKING DEAD is a story of survival,
so I guess it’s not surprising that these dangers must come, even on
the heels of so many other threats. These characters face anything and
everything, and it’s their ability to persevere that is admired and
celebrated. They wouldn’t earn such respect from viewers if the path
were an easy one. And while “30 Days Without an Accident” may not be
extremely action packed, there is definitely promise (and plenty of
rumor from those involved with the show) that this is just the calm
before a very intense storm.

Is Beth (Emily Kinney) the most
emotionally prepare to weather such events? She seems uncaring when
Daryl tells her that her boyfriend, Zach (Kyle Gallner, Veronica Mars),
dies in a raid. Admittedly, Zach’s demise is a cool one, with a literal
raining of walkers and a helicopter crashing through the ceiling of the
store the supply run party is in. But for Beth to be so callous is sad.
Yes, death is a part of her life, but has she turned humanity off
completely?

Rick also faces someone who may have
forgotten what it is to be human, a girl named Clara (Kerry Condon,
Luck, Rome). Clara looks a bit like a walker herself, dirty and
disheveled, clothing in tatters, hunched over and not walking so well.
Of course, that’s because she’s been alone in the woods with her love’s
walker-turned head in a bag, so anyone in her shoes would go crazy, as
she clearly has.

Yet, this speaks to a greater trend, the
slipping away of what makes a person a person, and a new kind of moral
compass. One of the themes of the series has long been how far can one
go and retain who they are? What kind of changes must one make to adapt
to this new lifestyle, and is life still worth living after those
sacrifices are made? These questions aren’t answered, but “30 Days
Without an Accident” gives us much to ponder.

There are still the old-fashioned
problems, too. Newcomer Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr., The Wire) is
definitely wrestling with alcoholism. But that may be the least of his
problems for the time being.

I don’t know that I’d count “30 Days
Without an Accident” among my favorite episode of THE WALKING DEAD.
However, it does a good job resetting the stage, and I’m glad the show
slows down enough to show us the new normal before ripping it apart
again. There are some intriguing new characters and surprising problems,
and it’ll be interesting to see how both are dealt with in the coming
weeks. Plus, the visuals of the raining walker scene are cool, and Clara
is very artistically created, with clues to her intent before her true
nature is revealed, such as the shot of a spider and its web. Neat.